Site Mobile Navigation

Like the Ohio River, a Bridge Project Divides a Community

Construction will start this summer in a $2.6 billion effort to build two new bridges between Louisville, Ky., and southern Indiana, with a completion date in 2016.Credit
Tyler Bissmeyer for The New York Times

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Long ago, the Ohio River helped make this Rust Belt city a national pacesetter in manufacturing and transportation, providing it with an identity and an anchor. But as American life shifted toward the automobile, the river also became an impediment.

Now, after decades of planning, the city intends to begin construction on a $2.6 billion two-bridge project that is said to be the costliest in the state’s history.

Along the way, planners of the Ohio River Bridges Project scaled it back by $1.5 billion to make it financially palatable and had to clear a series of obstacles raised by residents and activists on both sides of the river. The opponents often quarreled among themselves as much as with elected officials.

Although friction about some aspects of the project still reverberates, including over its tolls and environmental impact, construction is scheduled to begin this summer, and the two new bridges linking Kentucky and southern Indiana are expected to open in 2016. One bridge will be in downtown Louisville, and the other will serve an area just east of downtown.

“If we didn’t build this, we would become the bottleneck for the Southeastern United States,” said Chad Carlton, the project spokesman. “We think it could become the shape of things to come for infrastructure across Middle America.”

About $1 billion of the project will be financed by the two states, mostly through gas taxes. The exact amount of federal support, while substantial, is not known at this point. Tolls over the next 40 years are expected to generate around $10 billion.

Photo

Commuters inched toward the Clark Memorial Bridge during the rush in downtown Louisville.Credit
Tyler Bissmeyer for The New York Times

“There’s not a major bridge project in the country that doesn’t involve the use of tolls and other creative financing mechanisms,” Gov. Steven L. Beshear of Kentucky said in an interview. “The project will employ thousands, and it’s going to let the metropolitan areas of Kentucky and southern Indiana grow much faster and help jobs grow much faster.”

The project comes at a time when some cities are moving in the opposite direction, dismantling downtown bridges and expressways in favor of public transportation.

Hank V. Savitch, a professor of urban and public affairs at the University of Louisville, said that while some cities were shifting away from accommodating cars, Louisville’s project signaled a declaration of faith in suburban-style growth.

“They’re still fighting the last urban war, which was highway development — but that’s not the nature of the future of the city,” Professor Savitch said. “It will dissipate energy in the central city, where they should be concentrating investment, and instead draw capital to the outer metropolitan area.”

Among the most skeptical of the plan is the grass-roots group 8664, which has drawn nearly 12,000 supporters online. The group is asking that only part of the project be built and that Interstate 64, which runs along the river, be shifted to the edge of downtown so that the city’s sprawling waterfront could be revitalized with “Portland-style vibrancy.”

Under the current plan, the city intends to expand the riverfront highway, not dismantle it. It will also enlarge two other downtown expressways whose nexus with I-64 makes up what locals call Spaghetti Junction — a snarl of highways and ramps that critics say unnecessarily gobbles up a sizable swath of riverside real estate within walking distance of downtown.

“We wanted to reverse the 20th-century vision that saw urban areas not as places to live, but places to pass through,” said an 8664 co-founder, Tyler Allen, who ran for mayor in 2010, largely on the waterfront issue. “There’s stunning potential along the waterfront, but we ran into the buzz saw of power.”

Photo

A house in Prospect, Ky., was razed to make way for one of the new bridges.Credit
Tyler Bissmeyer for The New York Times

Building only one new bridge — a compromise favored by 8664 and other opponents of the project — does not go far enough in making travel safer and easier, project planners said. For one thing, they say, the current bridges are already exceeding capacity, as put on vivid display when a crack was discovered on the double-deck I-64 bridge in 2011, closing it temporarily.

A settlement was reached recently between the two states and the National Trust for Historic Preservation and River Fields conservancy group, which has opposed the construction of the East End bridge because of concerns that it would not significantly improve traffic and safety issues downtown. A federal judge approved the settlement package ordering that the states set aside $1.7 million to help preserve and relocate some of the properties.

Though some Indiana residents continue to be at loggerheads with planners over bridge tolls, a primary source of the project’s financing, most viewed the settlement as the smoothing out of the last substantial legal challenge. Groups have criticized the project on several fronts, including accusations that the tolls amount to a civil rights violation because they fall most heavily on low-income residents and that the effects of greenhouse gas emissions are not being adequately considered.

Supporters dismiss those notions, pointing out that the project has passed rigorous federal requirements and arguing that the bridges will improve quality of life by, among other things, relieving chronic traffic congestion.

But a 2011 study by economists at the University of Toronto concluded that expanding roads does not unclog traffic. In fact, the study found, it worsens it.

Matthew Turner, an economist and one of the study’s authors, said that the bridge tolls that are part of the plan will help spread out the congestion, but that compared with other cities he has studied, congestion in Louisville is not that acute.

“If you take the average bundle of trips, you can do them faster in Louisville than most other places in the U.S.,” Mr. Turner said. “Dropping more than $2 billion on this huge expansion in a city which is not growing as fast as many others might not be the best use of public money.”

Mr. Carlton, the project spokesman, has a different perspective.

“As funding in Washington dropped off and our area continued to expand, we decided we do have a choice, rather than curse the darkness,” Mr. Carlton said. “Many states are now figuring out how to settle choking gridlock, and we think we’ve found the right solution.”

Correction: March 8, 2013

An article on Feb. 19 about the debate over a $2.6 billion effort to build two bridges linking Kentucky and southern Indiana contained a number of errors.

Of the two bridges, it is the one known as the Downtown bridge, in Louisville — not the so-called East End bridge — that would potentially affect historic homes in Jeffersonville, Ind.

The main reasons that the River Fields conservancy group opposes the East End bridge are concerns that the bridge would not significantly improve traffic or address all safety issues — not because of the possible effects on the homes in Jeffersonville.

Besides River Fields, the National Trust for Historic Preservation was also a plaintiff in a settlement that ordered the two states to set aside money to help preserve and relocate some of the Jeffersonville properties.

The primary factor in delays of the bridges’ construction has been one of financing — not the lawsuit brought by the two groups.

The project has substantial federal financing; it is not the case that federal support is “not much.” (Federal funds are estimated to cover at least 60 percent and perhaps as high as 80 percent of the cost.)

Although planning for an eastern bridge began about 40 years ago, the two-bridge project has not been under debate for 40 years.

And a correction in this space on Saturday was published in error, before research had been completed on all of the questions raised about the article. That correction also erroneously stated that the East End bridge might affect the homes in Jeffersonville.

A version of this article appears in print on February 19, 2013, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Like the Ohio River, a Bridge Project Divides a Community. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe